The Cawthron Institute undertook a programme of work to assess and improve the representativeness, reliability, and interpretability of freshwater monitoring data collected around New Zealand. This included looking at alternative approaches to trend analysis and the integration of state and trend metrics, evaluating methods for reweighting water quality indicators to better reflect national river conditions and reviewing the adoption of quality control codes and metadata practices across regional council datasets.
Together, these reports provide insights and recommendations to strengthen the evidence base for freshwater management in Aotearoa New Zealand.
The Cawthron Institute undertook a programme of work to assess and improve the representativeness, reliability, and interpretability of freshwater monitoring data collected around New Zealand. This included looking at alternative approaches to trend analysis and the integration of state and trend metrics, evaluating methods for reweighting water quality indicators to better reflect national river conditions and reviewing the adoption of quality control codes and metadata practices across regional council datasets.
Together, these reports provide insights and recommendations to strengthen the evidence base for freshwater management in Aotearoa New Zealand.
This report examines the extent to which regional councils in Aotearoa New Zealand have adopted quality control (QC) codes and metadata practices in their water quality datasets.
Drawing on data from the 2022 LAWA freshwater update, the study found that while most councils record some form of metadata, only 11 of 16 councils had implemented QC codes to any degree, with significant variation across data types and councils.
The report highlights inconsistencies in metadata capture and the mixed use of internal and national QC coding systems. Recommendations include improving standardisation, supporting retrospective QC coding and enhancing metadata practices to improve data reliability and comparability.
Other reports in series
Read the reweighting water quality indicators to be more representative of rivers nationally report.